Supreme Court forces Legislature's hand

TALLAHASSEE — The U.S. Supreme Court has thrown the 2016 Florida Legislature two judicial curve balls.

Lawmakers were well-prepared to handled one of them and are now beginning to address the other. And the way the Legislature successfully responded to the first judicial challenge may foreshadow how they handle the second.

Both deal with the criminal justice system. In early January, the nation’s highest court found a provision in Florida’s death-sentencing procedure was unconstitutional. The House and Senate are now preparing bills to correct that constitutional flaw that may or may not force the state to resentence many of the state’s 390 inmates on Death Row.

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that a ban on mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile killers must be applied retroactively, clarifying a 2012 ruling that prohibited the sentences.

But lawmakers will not have to respond to the second ruling since they essentially addressed the issue with a juvenile sentencing reform law passed in 2014 and then amplified by subsequent state Supreme Court rulings.

“That decision was interesting from a national perspective but in Florida we have done our job and our juvenile sentencing laws are in conformance with the United States Constitution,” said Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island, who along with state Rep. James Grant, R-Tampa, led the effort to change Florida’s juvenile sentencing laws.

Changing the law for juveniles who have committed serious crimes, including murder, was not an easy task. Lawmakers began the effort after a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found Florida’s practice of sentencing juveniles to life-without-parole for non-homicide crimes was unconstitutional. Lawmakers were still debating that issue in 2012 when the nation’s highest court banned life-without-parole for juvenile murderers.

Two years later, lawmakers reached agreement on a bill that won unanimous support in the House and Senate that provides a sentence review for all juvenile offenders affected by the court decisions, with the timing and frequency depending on the severity of the crime.

But in the case of the juvenile killers serving life-without-parole, lawmakers left open the question of whether the law would be retroactive and apply to juveniles already serving those sentences.

Last March, the Florida Supreme Court ruled the 2014 law should be retroactive and that was validated by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week.

That hundreds of juveniles who received life-without-parole sentences for murder before the 2014 law took effect will now get a chance to have their sentences reviewed. Under the law, the juvenile killers will get a one-time review after serving 25 years of their sentences, with the possibility that their sentence could be changed to a 40-year term or they would remain in prison for the rest of their lives.

Lawmakers face a similar retroactivity issue when they change Florida’s death-sentencing procedure in the coming weeks. Bradley, a former state prosecutor, said lawmakers should handle the changes like they handled the reform of the juvenile sentencing laws.

“In this case, of the death penalty, I see again our job is to create a system that is constitutional,” said Bradley, a member of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. “Our system right now clearly has some constitutional flaws that must be addressed. We’ll address those flaws and then how that is applied to individual defendants, that is up for the court system to decide.”

WINNER OF THE WEEK: Medical marijuana. A constitutional amendment to allow medical use of marijuana in Florida will be back on the ballot in November after supporters secured nearly 700,000 valid voter signatures. A similar measure failed in 2014 when only 58 percent of the voters endorsed the ballot initiative, just short of the 60 percent necessary to change the state constitution.

LOSER OF THE WEEK: Corporate tax cuts. The House unveiled its nearly $1 billion in tax cuts but absent from the list was Gov. Rick Scott’s call for the elimination of the corporate income tax for manufacturers and retail businesses. There are still plenty of business tax breaks, including a reduction in the sales tax on commercial leases and the permanent elimination of the sales tax on equipment purchases by manufacturers. Scott also received a boost from the Senate, where leaders announced they are prepared to back the governor’s call for a $250 million business incentive fund.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Time to man up,” former Gov. Jeb Bush said about complaints from fellow Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio, who has been publicly criticizing the more than $20 million in negative ads run against Rubio by the Right to Rise PAC, a political committee that is supporting Bush’s presidential bid.

Lloyd Dunkelberger

Lloyd Dunkelberger is the Htpolitics.com Capital Bureau Chief.
He can be reached by email or call 850 556-3542.
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Last modified: January 29, 2016
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